Twice Punished: Perceived Procedural Fairness and Legitimacy of Monetary Sanctions

Abstract

Legal financial obligations (LFOs) are routinely assessed by the courts and corrections agencies. Yet, little is known about how individuals under correctional supervision experience and perceive legal debt. Understanding perceptions of LFOs is critical as research suggests that individuals who believe that criminal justice sanctions are fair and just are more likely to perceive the system as legitimate and comply. The current study examines in-depth interview data with individuals on probation or parole to understand perspectives of LFOs and what factors may condition these views. The results suggest that participants’ views are quite varied—expressing that they deserve some level of financial punishment, particularly in restitution cases, but they question additional costs that are not directly linked to the circumstances of the case, such as supervision fees, that exacerbate a perceived experience of double jeopardy or contradict the perceived purpose of the monetary assessment. Subgroup analyses suggest that individuals with a conviction for a sexual offense have secondary financial sanctions that deepen perceptions of inequities in the system.

“Like if you Get a Hotel Bill”: Consumer Logic, Pay‐to‐Stay, and the Production of Incarceration as a Public Commodity*

“…The resulting collateral consequences lead to a cycle of "carceral immobility and financial capture" endemic to histories of state extraction from criminalized social groups (Friedman 2020). Monetary sanctions have profound implications for how people experience criminal (in)justice (Pattillo and Kirk 2020;Pleggenkuhle et al 2020) and socioeconomic inequality, particularly for racially and economically marginalized communities (Bannon et al 2010;Cadigan and Kirk 2020;Cadigan and Smith 2021;Fernandes et al 2019;Friedman and Pattillo 2019;Harris 2016;Henricks and Harvey 2017;Katzenstein and Waller 2015;Link 2019;Link and Roman 2017;Martin 2018;Miller et al 2018;Piquero and Jennings 2017).…”

Broadening the Lens of Procedural Justice Beyond the Courtroom: A Case Study of Legal Financial Obligations in the Juvenile Court

“…They find that for parents, voice entails having the opportunity to “bridge the cultural gap” between legal actors and the families, who may come from different communities, in which parents can give context for their youth’s delinquent behavior and ensure the system does not mistreat them 7 . Specific to LFOs, Breanne Pleggenkuhle, Kimberly Kras, and Beth Huebner (2021) use a procedural justice framework to show how adults with criminal involvement view LFOs, distinguishing restitution from other monetary sanctions as being more legitimate; they also found that people with LFOs related to sex offenses found the system to be especially unfair to them as those LFOs were excessive and not eligible for waiver compared to other LFOs associated for other types of offenses. Elsewhere, Mary Pattillo and Gabriela Kirk (2020) study how adults perceive their LFOs compromising various forms of justice (e.g., constitutional, retributive, procedural, and distributive), due to the amounts which exceeded peoples’ income, the process by which the LFOs were administered, and the ways they were added onto other punishments such as jail and prison stays.…”

“…As others have explored in a variety of legal settings such as police encounters, prisons, and probation both in and outside of the United States (Tyler et al 2007; Jackson et al 2010; Bottoms and Tankebe 2012; Tankebe 2013; Johnson et. al 2014; Burdzij, Guzik, and Pilitowski 2019; Pleggenkuhle et al 2021), legitimacy broadly refers to the extent to which people feel obligated to obey the law, have faith and trust in the law, and have cynicism about the law. By legitimacy, we rely on the definition by Tom Tyler and his co-authors (2007, 10) who write:In the context of law and legal authorities, having legitimacy means that those in the community being regulated believe that their authorities “deserve” to rule and make decisions that influence the outcomes of members of the community.…”